


Checking Out

by Maya_Koppori



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maya_Koppori/pseuds/Maya_Koppori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I like to think that Janice didn't just sit idly by while her family was threatened, and neither did the child army and its precocious leader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Checking Out

It was some time after Strexcorp bought the radio station before Janice noticed. She had ignored it before, or put it down to the Faceless Old Woman or any of the other weird things that happened in her home town. But after catching a fleeting figure out of the corner of her eye every day for a month as she wheeled herself home from school, Janice decided that whatever weirdness was around her was not standard, everyday weirdness. It was a black and green act of war.

She couldn't tell her stepdad. Steve was really, really nice, but he worried so much already about what he saw in the arrows and skylines that she hated to give him more to worry about. So instead she wrote. She started to write down every odd shadow and every twinge in the darkness that made her feel unsafe- using bits of melted candle wax, of course. She wrote at home, at lunch, in class, and every spare moment in between. That was what got the child army's attention.

"You're more important than you think." Janice looked up from her desk. A girl around her age stood, arms crossed, beside her. She had lovely dark skin and a bandage across her nose, and in her hand she gripped a copy of Walter Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Revised and Expanded Edition.

Janice put down her makeshift crayon and stared. This was Tamika Flynn, the town's hero and her own secret idol. She hadn't been to school in days, too busy organizing and training and hiding, but here she was now, in the moment that mattered.

"Nothing is important," Janice answered belatedly, just as Uncle Cee taught her. "Nothing even exists. Why would anything be important if nothing exists?"

"WE exist," Tamika said, bright orange and white swirling in her tone. "And we are important. I'm important. You're important. Your family is important. That's why you're in danger." She slid her book onto Janice's desk and walked out with it another word. She went back to being missing, but not lost.

Janice put the book in her bag without opening it. It took up residence in her night stand at home, a silent reminder of Tamika's ominous words.

A week later, the Girl Scout cookies she had ordered arrived. Uncle Cee promised her that he would help sell them. She worried about him, stuck in that studio with all of those boxes, but she was grateful all the same. It had been so long since she had been able to go out with her friends in the troupe, and Night Vale wasn't exactly wheelchair friendly. She was counting down the days, and the boxes of cookies sold.

"Janice, honey! Cecil's show is on! He's talking about your cookies!" Her stepdad's happy blue voice floated in from the kitchen, where he was busy making scones for the upcoming PTA meeting. Janice rolled away from her homework at the dining room table and into the kitchen, catching the portable radio Steve tossed her as she glided by.

She returned to the table and listened while she worked. She missed only hearing Uncle Cee. That woman, Lauren, made her stomach do strange things when she spoke in her sicky-yellow chirp. (Cecil, of course, was sparkly purple.) Not in the stomach beetles way, or the Glow Cloud (all hail). It was like a bright light was trying to escape from her and burn her out, and the very source of it was turning and flailing within her.

She giggled when Uncle Cee mentioned all of the boxes crowding around Daniel, his new supervisor. Janice didn't like him very much, either. He never stopped smiling, but he wasn't happy. He was cold and quiet. His voice was gray.

Eh, she wasn't going to be able to concentrate on double Spanish any more tonight. Setting aside her notebook to burrow in her backpack for the night, Janice turned up the radio just as Lauren brought up the Girl Scouts' trip. She said Janice's name and Janice froze. Even over the radio, her ochre tones had darkened to the moldy brown of a rotten banana. Malice. Hatred. Danger.

Janice grabbed her bag, wheeling through the house and packing anything she could. Water. Food. Some warm clothes. Her hand hesitated over Kaufmann for only a moment before bagging it as well. "I'm going out," she called as she wheeled through the door. "Don't wait up for me!"

"Sweetheart, what are you-?" The door slammed on Steve's rapidly purpling worry. Janice raced out into the desert dusk, cycling through her options. Mom was out of town. Uncle Cee was at the radio studio, but so were Daniel and Lauren. That only left one person who she knew could help her, and she had to find her before whatever had been tailing her found out she was out of the house.

She didn't live far from the library. In only a few minutes Janice was staring up at the imposing structure, all dark windows and rude angles. Taking the ramp, she slowly approached a side door and knocked four times.

A small slot slid open near the top of the door. Two eyes appeared, narrowed in suspicion. "What do you want?"

Janice rummaged in her bag and pulled out her book, holding it up to the door. "I need to make a return."

The eyes widened, and the fuchsia that had drifted from the slot morphed into orange impossibly quickly. She heard the sound of fourteen locks being undone at once and the door swung inward. Tamika Flynn stood inside, silhouetted by the fluorescent lights of the library's stack room. A dozen other children stood behind her with slingshots, all of them trained on Janice. "Stand down," Tamika ordered, and they did. To Janice, she smiled sympathetically. "I was listening. You did the right thing by coming here."

She ushered Janice inside and led her through the labyrinthian corridors, past shelf after shelf of biographies. "We're you followed?"

"I've been followed," Janice admitted. "They've been watching me for weeks, and I don't know why."

"Don't worry, it's not you. It's your uncle they want, and they'll use any leverage they have. But you ought to be safe here. Did you tell anyone where you were going?"

"No. I just said I was going out."

"Good." Tamika stopped in front of a door and opened it. "Hey, girls. Got another one for you."

"Janice!" A dozen voices chimed in unison. Janice's mouth dropped open. It was her whole troupe, in an assembly line of assault slingshots. Each was huge, and fitted especially for hardback novels. There must have been dozens constructed already. "You guys! What are you doing here? We were supposed to meet at Gretchen's to go over packing lists tonight!" Janice wheeled over to the pile of slingshots and picked one up. It was heavy and solid. Well-made. Powerful.

"Like, that was the plan," Thalia agreed as she passed a welding torch down the line. "But Strex has been making too many threats lately, especially towards us kids. This is the safest place to be."

"And when Lauren threatened you on the radio, we knew you'd show up," Nora added. She thwacked the spot next to her at the table. "So come on, these things aren't going to arts and craft themselves!"

"Wait, I don't understand." Janice looked plaintively at Tamika. "What's going on here? I thought I would find you here, and that's why I came. I just wanted advice from someone I could trust."

Tamika bent down and put a hand on Janice's shoulder. "You want my advice? Ok. There's a war coming up. Strex isn't going to stop until it takes all of us. It won't stop at the community radio station. And your family is right in the middle of it. If you sit still and let it happen, they'll use you against Cecil. What do _you_ think you should do?"

Janice looked down at her lap. The slingshot looked empty laying there, right next to the perfect ammunition. She picked up Kaufmann and clenched her jaw, looking up at Tamika. "I'm going to fight. In any way I can."

And when she saw courageous orange in the air, it was her own.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Checking Out [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10174364) by [the_dragongirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dragongirl/pseuds/the_dragongirl)




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